


Burnt in Between

by nikatsu



Category: DBSK|Tohoshinki|TVXQ, So Nyuh Shi Dae | Girls' Generation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:59:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikatsu/pseuds/nikatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaejoong loves Yoona as much as the sun rises from the east. Which is always because it is one of very few true things he knows. But Jaejoong loves BoA as much as dry earth craves water. It rejuvenates… it satiates. It brings him back to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burnt in Between

**Author's Note:**

> jaejoong-centric | feat. jaejoong/yoona, jaejoong/boa and changmin/yoona  
> dark angst (au), 6099w, r. | trigger warnings: incest, rape, implied violence
> 
> a/n: Please beware of the trigger warnings! Some themes here never happened to me, of course, but while I was writing this—they felt fit for the story. This is based on a recurring horrific nightmare I had when I was 10-13 years old, and is written for a very overdue aupairs@LJ prompt "hoodlums".

 “I think I finally get it.”

 

Jaejoong takes a long drag out of his cigarette, letting the smoke burn down his throat and fill his lungs. The sun will rise in a couple of minutes, its light threatening to swallow the shine out from its’ stars— _switch off_.

 

“Get what?”

 

Her grin is grim when she finally looks at him, her eyes usually bright despite the dark circles under her eyes. It has been too long a day, and Yoona was all too young to look so old. He let himself wrap her inside his arms, hoping that it would be enough but knowing it would never be.

 

“I’m yours, aren’t I?”

 

“Always.”

 

She shakes her head. “No, not really,” she tells him and he hesitates.

 

“No,” he repeats because it’s only the truth. _No, not really._

 

 

 

 

 _Jaejoong loves Yoona as much as the sun rises from the east. Which is_ always _because it is one of very few true things he knows._

 

 

Jaejoong is ten when he meets a five year old Yoona, all gangly limbs and gap-toothed smiles. His new adoptive parents are nice enough though their always out, leaving him to watch over their daughter alone in a big, big house. Yoona has about everything a little girl could want, dolls and books and clothes, but all she seems to care for is the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he makes over the counter because he (thinks) is old enough— _smart enough_ —to handle a knife (it’s a bread knife, but still a knife) without hurting himself.

 

“Yoongie, I already made you four sandwiches! You can’t eat mine!” he whines, pouting. His cheeks are padded with bread crumbs and small dollops of jelly. His plate is littered with crumbs as well, all thanks to Yoona munching on his sandwiches as though they were her own and grinning (always grinning) at him from her seat on the counter.

 

She is too happy a child, her feet dangling from the table, but Jaejoong likes her that way. Likes her in the same way he likes his peanut butter with jelly. Which is _all the time_ because **nothing** pairs the spread better… and no one is better with him than Yoona.

 

“Oppa! Your food is mine, ok!” She makes him promise, lifting her pinky towards him and smiling that gap-toothed smile. And he relents because he’d already decided that whatever was his was hers as well the second she’d come to his life.

 

“Ok, Yoona.”

 

 

 

_Jaejoong loves Yoona as much as the sun rises from the east._

Lies are toxic, but they flow so easily out of his mouth he starts to believe them as truths.

_My parents died when I was little so yours thought I should live with you instead._ His first lie is easiest to say because he’d hardly known any figure to fill the spot of missing guardians all of his life. He was found in box outside of a nursing home, taken in by the elderly and presented to nurses who didn’t know what to do with him. Strung along a series of arms and homes for years and years that were never completely willing to accept him into their world—

 

Until they found him, scratched up and bloodied after getting into it with slightly older and tougher bullies in the block. _Half-dead_ , he remembers, but proud to have fought off enemies in his small size.

 

“We’ll help you find your parents,” one of them (Yoona’s mother) had cooed, patting the dirt off his cheeks. “But for now, you’ll live with us.”

 

Her partner (husband, whatever) had only nodded in agreement, helping him up to his feet and pulling him with them. Jaejoong becomes a part of a family he does not know the very next day and suddenly it becomes too easy for him to lie.

 

It becomes easy to lie about his origins to his new little sister; about his parents that don’t look anything like him to too curious neighbors peeking in; about his protectiveness over ~~his~~ Yoona to those who adopted him, who took care of him when no one wanted to.

 

It becomes easy to lie about what he knew of them; of their so-called jobs and late night meetings. It becomes easy to lie about never being an orphan when really he still was.

 

(But Yoona doesn’t know what it means to be an orphan and Jaejoong prays she never will.)

_Which is_ always _because it is one of very few true things he knows._

 

 

 

Yoona grows up too beautifully, steadily every passing year that it begins to weigh him down.

 

He’d ignored it at first. He’d ignored the little pangs that pinched at his insides whenever she greeted him with a sweet smile. He’d ignored the warmth flooding his cheeks; the blood rushing through his head and heart and to other organs that should not be reacting so boldly at her presence. It caused him pain to play nonchalant towards her. To pretend that she had no effect on him when she did— _does_ and always.

 

His resolve dissolves late one summer night after she’d turns fifteen and Jaejoong creeps into her room to watch her sleep.

 

He thought he’d been silent when he tiptoed towards her, already aching at the thought of her—and even more at the sight of her. His mind raced. _Yoona, Yoona, Yoona…_

 

“Does it hurt?”

 

She asks so quietly he almost missed it.

 

Jaejoong watches her rise from beneath her blankets, letting the sheets pool around her waist. His dimmed eyes trained on her tongue darting across her lips in a worried manner—the unconscious act daring him, really, to come closer.

 

She waves her hand at him clumsily, her gaze lowered to her lap as she asked again—a quiver evident in her tone.

 

The quiver excited him, and his mind—the rational side of him—turns off.

 

“Yes. Help me out, Yoona.”

 

She gasps at the force of his hands gripping her hands overhead and cries at the sharp pain of filling her abruptly. And while he would have stopped—would have been horrified of himself—he was neither as he finished, completely spent in his desire of her skin.

 

“Yours is mine, always.” He tells her, brushing her cheeks.

 

It was statement rather than a question.

 

She watches the blood stain the cloth beneath her, stone-faced and monotone. There could only be one answer.

 

“Always.”

 

 

 

 

**Always.**

 

 

 

 

_(It kills him to see her.)_

 

Yoona keeps her promise.

 

_(So he starts to skip classes, joins gangs and fights.)_

 

She doesn’t question his way with her. Rough, scolding and selfish.

 

_(Her parents don’t know—or perhaps they do, but don’t care.)_

 

She stays.

 

_(He likes to think it’s because she loves him.)_

She stays, but her eyes never look to his.

 

_(He figures that lies are better than the toxicity of her truth.)_

 

 

 

_Always._

 

 

 

 

His adoptive parents are murdered; hung by the neck in the middle of the living room one winter morning. Jaejoong isn’t surprised to see them lifelessly dangling when he woke that morning, but he’d hoped it would have been done elsewhere rather than in the middle of the only home he’s ever known.

 

The Korean mafia wasn’t famous for being discreet with their crimes. Actually, little is known of them at all and Jaejoong thinks he should be careful of what he does know.

 

Yoona screams when she sees them—lying lifeless on stretchers and being carried away by all too-indifferent paramedics. Her legs giving out from underneath her as she clutches at him, her pain evident in her doe eyes.

 

She screams until her throat is hoarse but doesn’t cry, and it is _this_ that bothers him the most.

 

 

_He loves BoA._

 

 

Jaejoong meets BoA outside of the homeless shelter the police put him and Yoona in for the time being. He is taking a (too long) drag from his cigarette when she comes up to him from the corner, her brows knitted in concern at his disheveled appearance.

 

He’s known of her for a while from school. Her name as popular as strawberry milk in a convenience store. The privileged girl from the better side of town, born into perfectly rich parents, pretty ( _extremely_ , he finds himself thinking) and perfect. Jaejoong doesn’t understand why she would be hanging around in such a dank place as a homeless shelter, but he finds that he doesn’t care as much as he should.

 

 _If she wanted to be there, then fine_ , he thinks, _she’s not of my concern._

 

“It’s rude to stare,” he tells her, flicking his burned out cigarette in her direction. He lights a new one as she pauses for a moment, locking her bike to the side. She kicks his cigarette with her sneaker, rubbed down and well-worn—old, which surprises him because he’d always thought girls like her didn’t care for anything not ‘ _new_ ’.

 

“I wasn’t staring. I was observing,” she replies nonchalantly, stopping just near enough to breathe his smoke. BoA doesn’t flinch as he purposefully exhales too close. Instead she narrows her eyes at him and smirks.

 

She smirks as though she knows him, as though she could understand him. _Ah, the classic good girl wanting to reform a bad boy_. The thought makes him laugh.

 

He acts and leans, towards her (so so close). Her eyes are wide when he does but doesn’t move away—staying put, perhaps, to show that she was brave. His gaze flickers towards her pink lips, glossed by her tongue shyly running along it as she stared at him. Waiting for him to strike, to do _something_.

 

And he does. Jaejoong captures her lips in between his and kisses her fiercely, pressing himself roughly against her on the wall. His hands pulling the fabric of her shirt upwards before raking his fingers on her pure skin, pushing her to give up, _to run away_. But instead, she moans—an impassioned sound, low in her throat and fluttering off her heated lips and onto his.

 

It was pitiful, how a sound could make him feel so powerful. So weak. So ruined.

 

“Girls like you shouldn’t be around here.” He breathes, pulling back to look at his handiwork. Her shirt open under his gaze, her breasts spilling from their confinement as she arches towards him— _aching_ to be touched once more. “If you wanted a little fun, I’m sure any guy from the baseball team from school would gladly”—his breath tickles her ear and she shivers—“take care of you.”

 

Her eyes burn with a fire Jaejoong didn’t think she would have. “I’d rather die than let any of those _idiots_ touch me.” She spits. Her hands find their way onto his shirt, curling over the material in a possessive manner that amused him. Her smirk tells him that she wanted to play and something in him twitches in response.

 

“But you… You, I wouldn’t mind touching.”

 

Jaejoong laughs as he pulls her towards the room the shelter had provided him. He sees Yoona in the lounge, talking to an abandoned elderly couple but doesn’t stop on his way. He ignores the way her brows shoot up in concern, the way her eyes glaze over in realization and acceptance—the way her lips stays arched down in indifference.

 

BoA touches him so close that night, and the contact burns his thoughts away.

 

 

 

_It rejuvenates… it satiates._

BoA wants it rough when they are together. Chafing and wild. Her fingernails biting against his skin, their mouths swearing at each other as their limbs tangle in knots across the sheets. She tells him so on a night he doesn’t feel like throwing her out, burying her nose against the crook of his neck and spelling out the words with her lips.

 

He wants it rough only because it makes him forget.

 

 

 

_He loves BoA as much as dry earth craves water._

 

 

 

He slides into her slow one night, grasping her thigh hard against his hip.

 

BoA’s body illuminates in the dark. A drop of his sweat travelling down the valley of her exposed chest as she throws her head back and cries out.

 

The door opens just as he picks up the pace, responding in the only way he knew with a woman’s body so willing for him. She hisses “I love you, Jaejoong” as her eyes close—her moans echoing against the walls.

 

Jaejoong says it back, but not to her—but to another pair of eyes (big and round—doe-like) looking on from the background. He grins, hating himself when she shrugs and turns back—coming in his release hard and sweltering.

 

A lock clicks shut.

 

The room is dank of their sex and Yoona’s absence.

 

 

_Jaejoong loves Yoona as much as the sun rises from the east._

 

It isn't how he envisioned things to be. He hadn't wanted anything grand for himself, but he had wanted much more for her. Yoona deserved more than what was thrust upon them. She deserved more than to live in a dank one-bedroom apartment, away from school and getting by from what he earns doing things she would never approve of if only she knew.

 

Yoona doesn’t smile as much as she used to. Jaejoong misses the way her eyes slant one way as a grin overcomes her features, but these days are darker than most and she rarely smiles easy anymore. It’s as though she’s switched off that bright part of herself that he’d loved in the first place, the part he wanted and jerked to in BoA’s body.

 

“I’m meeting my boss today,” he tells her during breakfast. They’ve had runny eggs and ham again today for the past six consecutive days in two weeks and he doesn’t wonder why Yoona only pushes them around in her plate. “Apparently I’m moving up in the business if it means meeting him after only three years with the crew.”

 

“You’re only 21 years old,” she replies, her tone grim. She doesn’t mean anything by it but to Jaejoong it meant everything. For him it means ‘ _You’ll get yourself killed_ ’. It means ‘ _Be careful_ ’. It means ‘ _I love you, oppa_ ’.

 

“Yeah, I am,” he says, shoveling the last of his food into his mouth. “And you’re 16. What are you trying to say?”

 

Yoona looks at him then and he starts, consumed by the way her eyes shine with unshed tears that never really seemed to seep through. Her lips part, pink and moist and he stares at them, wondering how long it’d been since he’d tasted them under his. _Three years and fifty-eight days_ , his mind offers and he chastises himself for unconsciously keeping count.

 

It’d been three years and fifty-eight days since he’d pulled them out of the homeless shelter and joined a powerful (and dangerous) mob to sustain their livelihood. Three years since he’d taken BoA to his bed and him into hers—three years since Yoona had stopped smiling for him or anyone. Three years since he’d tasted her and still wanted her even though it was so fucking wrong for him to feel that way.

 

“Nothing,” Yoona answers after minutes of silence. She finishes her orange juice and nothing else before standing, wrapping her plate of food in saran wrap before sticking it inside their dingy refridgerator. Jaejoong knows she won’t eat it until much later, once the egg has turned solid because of the cold and the ham become tasteless. He doesn’t like it but he says nothing to reprimand her.

 

He’d done enough to damage her. It seemed too much now if he were to scold her even more.

 

She watches him wearily as he brought his plate towards the sink, wiping his hands on a dish towel before throwing it over a chair to dry. Her eyes are glazed over again, seeing nothing and everything at the same time. She doesn’t need to say anymore to him now, Jaejoong already knows it’s pointless but he wished she’d try.

 

Jaejoong bites back a bemused laugh. He thinks he doesn’t deserve her effort either.

 

“I’ll be back by tomorrow night then.”

 

 

 

_His love for her (her, them) consumes him._

The boss partners him with another man of his age to overlook a drug exchange between their crew and a reclusive but deadly Japanese mafia. His boss tells him he can trust Changmin—“ _he’s my best_ ”—but Jaejoong thinks to himself that he shouldn’t.

 

No one should ever trust a mob member. Let alone another who seemed almost exactly like him.

 

“The drop-off is easy enough. It’s getting to the meeting place that’s going to be a problem. The vicinity’s smack-dab in the middle of all five police stations in the city.” Changmin says later, waving at a map with a cigarette in hand. He grins in amusement as Jaejoong watches him with weary eyes. Changmin is obviously educated, too tall for his own good and exceedingly charming. It puts him off how someone like him could be mixed up in a business like theirs but Jaejoong wasn’t one to judge. He didn’t have a right to.

 

“I’m actually pretty impressed that the Japs were smart enough to ensure the exchange only troubles us since it’s in their area. Too bad they let pick where exactly in the area—they can’t complain if we ask for the exchange in the sewage line.”

 

“Think it’ll be safe?” Jaejoong finally asks after a minute or two. “The pipes you’re suggesting we meet at are too close to three of those police stations. Wouldn’t it be suspicious if men in tailored suits suddenly started climbing down manholes?”

 

The smirk on Changmin’s face unnerves him and he grips his cigarette a little too forcefully as he replies, “That’s why we’re taking another route to the meeting place. The Japs can figure out themselves how to get there—but we, we take the access chute in janitor’s basement room of the abandoned shopping mall. It’ll take us to the meeting spot in less the ten minutes. I’ve already got guys there clearing the place of any shit we might step on. It’s all been covered, Im. You don’t have to worry.”

 

Jaejoong nods, stubbing out his cigarette with a grunt. He moves to light another one up as Changmin takes his turn to observing him. He doesn’t even want to think about what he might be judging about him. They were sitting across from each other, both leaning back against their respective chairs and cross-legged.

 

“I have two sisters, you know. I get why you would be cautious about this sort of thing.” Changmin offers, tossing a lighter his way after his burns out. The luminous flame is bigger than Jaejoong expected it to be when he lights his cig, drawing shadows of his hand over the map splayed on the table between them. Jaejoong waits, flicking his eyes towards him, bidding him to continue before Changmin actually does, “One’s in second year of high school and a real pest while the other’s in her middle school and in pigtails. I did my research and I know you’re a protective brother like me, just trying to give my family a fighting chance. This drop-off guarantees an excessive pay-off so don’t worry about it falling out because it won’t. I made sure of it.”

 

They sit in silence and then Jaejoong speaks, “Anything else I should know about?”

 

Changmin shrugs. “I think your girlfriend’s hot, if that means anything. Pity you don’t love her enough to be honest. She’s not my type or anything but she is hot so I’ll give you that.”

 

He laughs despite himself, unsurprised somehow that this person— _his partner_ —could know much more about him than he’d ever allow anyone to find out. He realizes that he’d been right not to trust Changmin, but he was entertaining at least—that he’ll give him credit for.

 

“You really are one of the best, huh?” he says after an obnoxiously loud laugh, his eyes glittering dangerously as Changmin’s gaze meets his dead on.

 

Changmin smirks, exhaling a puff smoke to gather around him. “I _am_ the best.”

 

 

 

_But he also loves BoA as much as dry earth craves water._

BoA gave him the keys to her apartment the second she bought it for herself. She’s too smart for her own good, having able to establish herself quickly even without the help of her father’s money. She was sexy and charming to business partners, and they trusted her. It was just a shame that BoA only trusted him.

 

His lips skim the column of her neck that night he stops by, nipping at her flesh as she tittered between sleep and wakefulness. It doesn’t take much for her to whimper under his carress and Jaejoong thinks he likes that most of all about her. He thinks it’s the only reason why he’s kept her around all these years.

 

“I won’t be here tomorrow when you get back from work.” He tells her after, their limbs strewn together under her Egyptian sheets. Her head on his chest lifts as she turns to look at him, brow furrowing at his words. “I’m meeting my boss at his villa to discuss a new project. Might take overnight.”

 

“Okay,” she replies, nodding her head, her tone unusually pleasant for someone who’d been screaming herself hoarse less than a minute ago, “I’ll take Yoona out for a girls’ then.”

 

“You don’t have to.”

 

“Why not?” BoA argues, raising an eyebrow at him. Challenging him to retort. “I’ve never actually met her these past three years we’d been sleeping together and I _really_ think I should.”

 

Jaejoong hates that Changmin was right about her and how his body betrays the anger he feels. BoA is beautiful and he loves her (so much or not enough?) so his desire overshadows his rage. It’s all too cliché, really, how much he— _the anti-hero_ —could be so in love (and lust) with two women at the same time. He hates the fact that he is nothing but that—a cliché. One that will most likely die in the end of this tale.

 

“Jaejoong, why can’t I meet her?”

 

“Because I don’t want you to.” Jaejoong tells her roughly, flipping her over onto her back—one hand braced on the left side of her head while the other forced her knees apart. She looked at him wide-eyed in half-concealed fright, mute now that he’d flourished his power over her once again. He dipped his fingers between her thighs, spreading the wetness seeping there—watching the fight in her ebb away as she threw her head back to cry out before pulling away to straddle her thorax.

 

“Yoona is my business, not yours—so shut up about it and put your mouth to good use.”

 

BoA’s eyes are lidded by the time her lips touch the tip of him and it takes all of his strength (anger) to be gentle as he fucked her mouth. He comes at the sight of her fearful gaze, tinged with all of the lust and love she felt for him all these years, marking her as his alone without his meaning to.

 

He leaves her to lying on the bed, covered in his release without another look back. If he had spared a glance, he wouldn’t have been able to forget the tears shining in her eyes. Tears he wished were Yoona’s instead of hers.

 

 

 

 

_His love consumes him._

The drop-off is a success and Jaejoong, for the first time since entering the mob, revels in the benefits of its riches. He offers Changmin a meal—“ _My treat_.” he said—in celebration of their easy accomplishment at the diner where he knows Yoona works at. It’s late and not much patrons are left eating at the establishment when they arrive and Jaejoong thinks the timing was as perfect as it should be.

 

He waves at Yoona from one of the corner booths, grinning unusually bright at her furrowed brows and tight-lipped expression as she comes over with a notepad in hand. “This is my sister, Yoona,” he introduces, pulling her down beside him inside the booth—his arm possessively wrapped around her waist. The indignant yelp of complete surprise isn’t lost to him but he ignores it anyway, only pulling her closer than ever to smell the scent of peaches and bread wafting from her form.

 

Yoona regards him with a soft hello and without thinking Jaejoong presses a kiss on her neck. She stiffens in his hold almost instantly, her jaw tightening at the gesture though her face remained as impassive as it was when she arrived at their table. He’d think she was teasing him if it weren’t for the hard state of her gaze, focused forward but empty.

 

His chest aches and his hold lets go. She breathes.

 

From his end, Changmin stares at them curiously but thankfully says nothing about what he saw.

 

Jaejoong thinks he might like him a little better if he keeps his mouth shut more.

 

“I’m Changmin,” he says a beat later, offering his hand to Yoona despite the glare Jaejoong sends his way. “I didn’t quite catch your name. Is it Joo—”

 

“It’s Yoona,” She responds, correcting him meekly. The way she shyly meets Changmin’s gaze as she collects herself, stands and asks for their order makes Jaejoong’s stomach turn. He doesn’t miss the slight genuine upturn on her lips, or the lingering glance Changmin throws her way throughout the night but he keeps quiet instead.

 

He doesn’t pay for their meals, leaving him before the bill arrives and rushing out the door to catch a cab over to the East side of the city as irrational anger festers in his gut.

 

Jaejoong doesn’t think Changmin would care at all.

 

 

 

_It consumes him._

 

 

 

BoA welcomes him with open arms—where he spends days buried in her. _Sanctuary._

 

 _Always_ , she cries his name, whispering the devotion she feels onto his lips. Devotion Jaejoong thinks he’s never deserved for all the days he’s spent in her.

 

“I love you. I love you so much.”

 

He kisses her, apologizing because he knows his gut says the same but his heart won’t allow it.

 

 

**_Consume._ **

Jaejoong cries his devotion for another’s name.

 

And then leaves as the heart who loves him shatters in its’ admission.

 

 

 

_Jaejoong **loves** Yoo—_

 

He slips under the covers with her that night, wrapping an arm around her torso roughly. He can smell the change in her scent—no longer just the peaches and bread he aches for but with something else. _Musk and cigarettes._

 

His nails dig into her waist’s skin—his grip meant to hurt, to convey a message.

 

_You’re mine._

_That’s how it is._

_You’re mine._

_Whore. Bitch. Slut._

_You’re mine._

_Don’t look at anyone else._

_You’re mine._

_I love you._

_You’re mine._

_“_ Let me go _”_ is all she says but he doesn’t.

 

They stay awake, alert and unmoving as morning light comes to view.

 

 

 

_It’s wrong._

Yoona is gone by the time he comes home from one of his _projects_. _No note, no nothing._

 

Jaejoong’s expected this, but it surprises him still how she was able to stay so long.

 

 

 

_It’s wrong._

BoA is gone too. _Gone._

 

Her clothes, her scent, her everything erased from her apartment.

 

The sharp pain this realization brings hits him harder than he cared to expect.

 

 

 

**_Wrong._ **

****

****

****

“You’re a sick fuck.” Changmin tells him during another drop-off, his tone direct and unassuming. He stands over him tall and sturdy but angry as he speaks. “Blood-related or not, you just don’t _screw_ your sister.”

Jaejoong laughs because it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would.

 

“Jealous I got to fuck her first?” he says after a chuckle, sucking in a deep breath from his cigarette. The puff of smoke envelopes the space between them, floating on the precipice of a tension so palpable he could almost taste it on his lips. He laughs again, playing it off as nothing because he loves her and that’s how he thinks a true brother _should_ feel.

 

“It wasn’t that great anyway, it being her first time. She was too stiff.” He continues, inhaling another breath; watching as Changmin’s jaw tightens and his fists curl at his sides. “Be grateful I got her ready for your sorry ass.”

 

“I’d put a bullet through your head right now if only she hadn’t told me not to.”

 

He genuinely grins at this despite himself. “My _sister_ loves me.”

 

“Yeah, she does,” Changmin deadpans, the anger suddenly gone from his features and replaced with a unusually calm, calculating smile. He motions towards their client up ahead and they both readily stand straighter as they approach side by side, the air of professionalism overtaking the tension between.

 

“But not as much as she loves me.” The taller man breathes, loud enough for only Jaejoong to hear before sirens wail at a distance and his body seizes.

 

His vision goes black just as Changmin dangles a police badge over his face.

 

 

 

_The sun rises in the East and sets in the West._

“I didn’t want to get you involved in this,” Changmin begins, his hands buried in his pockets as he smiles at him from behind steel bars, “but it’s the least I can do for the woman I love.”

 

Jaejoong gets introduced to Changmin again but in a whole different way. He learns that his full name is Shim Changmin and that he’d been an undercover cop feeding information about the mob to the Federal Bureau for the past five years. He finds out that Changmin had known about his adoptive parents’ involvement with the mob before their deaths and had helped keep them off radar since he thought he’d be of use. He learns that Changmin had wanted to meet him earlier on, but couldn’t because the boss was still too wary of him then. It took some time but when they’d finally met, Changmin thought it was time to reel him onto the right side of the tracks—the side where he could escape the hoodlum life and actually live.

 

“Then why’d you hit me?” Jaejoong asks all was said, glaring at the taller man from his seat on a grimy bench. Changmin shrugs nonchalantly and replies, “I told you you were a ‘sick fuck’, didn’t I? It’s the least I can do for the woman I love.”

 

“I’m assuming you mean Yoona, right?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“She alright?” Jaejoong asks, though he already knows the answer. Who else smelt like musk and cigarettes but the man in front of him?

 

Changmin glowers at him, jaw tightening a fraction before relaxing. “She’s with me. Of course, she is.”

 

“Now, listen…” He says, bracing an arm over the bars to peer at him seriously, “I know there’s still some good fight in you. I know you can be better than just some lost, angst-ridden criminal looking for a quick buck. You have a heart somewhere deep inside of you and I want to appeal to its’ better nature by guaranteeing you a life outside of this city—safe from any of this dirt coming back to haunt you.”

 

“What exactly are you proposing?”

 

“Do this one last job we’ve rigged up for the boss.” The taller man answers simply. He pushes a folder between the bars and Jaejoong cautiously takes it into his grasp. “He already knows about it. The men with us the day I took you down here were some of my own and I let them go back a little roughed up to ensure the authenticity of that staged ‘arrest’. I’m going to let you go in three days to swear revenge on us for the boss.”

 

Jaejoong snorts, throwing the folder onto the floor. “What makes you think he’ll believe me?”

 

Changmin smirks. “Because he let you meet me. I’m his _best gun,_ and that’s a title the Korean mob boss doesn’t just give lightly. Who I trust, he’ll surely trust as well. Tell him I got gunned and you managed to escape within a thread of your life and had to lay low for awhile. He’ll eat that shit up.”

 

He turns to leave, pausing only for a second to pin him with a somber stare before uttering, “Trust me.”

 

Problem is, though he believes everything he said, Jaejoong still doesn’t think he should.

 

 

 

_The sun rises_

He dreams of peaches, white sheets and whispered devotions ( _I love you, Jaejoong, I love you so much._ ) and then wakes in tears he didn’t know he could still muster to create.

 

Jaejoong opens his eyes, keels over and vomits the pain that stabs him deeper than before.

 

 

 

_in the East_

“Do you know where she is?”

 

“She’s at my apartment, waiting for me.” Changmin replies easily, throwing a three of Clubs onto his stack. He doesn’t look at him and Jaejoong thinks it’s better if he doesn’t. “I told her not to go to that diner anymore. The patrons there got a little handsy.”

 

He throws a four of Diamonds onto his opponent’s stack.

 

“I didn’t mean Yoona.”

 

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

 

Jaejoong shrugs, staring down at an Ace of Hearts before pocketing it. “Don’t you know everything?”

 

Their game of poker goes on for awhile until Changmin’s Royal Flush obliterates his Straight in Diamonds.

 

“She’s in Japan, managing a small café in Osaka.”

 

He leaves before Jaejoong can ask for any more.

 

 

 

_and sets in the West_

Yoona visits him on the day of his release.

 

“I never got it.” She says, staring down at her linked fingers. Jaejoong doesn’t move to ask why because he knows she’ll continue and he’s done trying to force her into anything anymore. The broken pieces of what they are were already to ragged to put back together. He’d lost her years ago, and even the frayed seams of what he still held of her were breaking one by one.

 

“You always say that ‘Yours is mine’ but that hasn’t been the case since I was five, huh.”

 

He shakes his head and she rambles on, “Since t-that night it’s been ‘You’re mine’, hasn’t it, Oppa?”

 

“Yeah.” His voice is hoarse when he answers and when she tears up (her first real cry in what seems like _forever_ ), he hangs his head, “I’m sorry.”

 

“He makes me want it.” Yoona starts beats later, finally returning his gaze. The pang is sharp when she steps closer, a hand on a bar and her eyes glistening with something real. “Changmin makes me want sex the way you wanted it from me. He makes me want to fuck him all the time. He makes me want to consume him and love him and—”

 

“You love him.” He offers simply and it kills (heals) him a little when she nods.

 

His heart relents. Cop out.

 

_It’s over. It’s done._

 

“Tell him I hope his plan is as foolproof as he says it is.”

 

 

 

 _He loves Yoona as much as the sun rises from the east. Which is_ always _because it is one of very few true things he knows._

Sirens wail farther and farther into the distance as they watch the sunlight slowly peek behind dark clouds. He is battered, bruised and she is too young to look so old. The embrace they share is out of resigned comfort and nothing more.

 

“I think I finally get it.”

 

“Get what?”

 

Her lips turn up grimly, shrugging. “I’m yours, aren’t I?”

 

“Always.”

 

She shakes her head, tilts it and plants a soft kiss on his cheek. And then Yoona flashes him a genuine smile, at last. _At last._

 

“No, not really.”

 

“No.” He agrees before releasing her to the man waiting patiently behind them.

 

This is goodbye.

The bell on the door dings as he steps inside.

 

He sits at a corner, running a hand through longer and lighter hair than she remembers. His eyes unfortunately covered by thick sunglasses she swears were from her from way long before.

 

She sits beside him, knees tucked in and breathes ‘Hello’.

 

He moves to take his sunglasses off and somehow, after, their fingers link, her heart thrums.

 

 “I don’t mind being touched by you.” She echoes words from long before, and he only smiles in response as he finally looks at her.

 

His eyes are bright. Alive.

_Jaejoong loves BoA as much as dry earth craves water. It rejuvenates… it satiates. It brings him back to life._


End file.
